Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

该项目的总体目标是通过在朴茨茅斯历史船坞举行的大型晚间活动，让朴茨茅斯地区的家庭和普通公众参与在朴茨茅斯大学宇宙学和引力研究所进行的天体物理学、宇宙学和引力研究。这一STFC小奖将使我们能够在朴茨茅斯保持和发展成功的公共参与伙伴关系。自2013年以来，我们每年都在朴茨茅斯历史造船厂(PHD)举办这项活动。在这个标志性的地点举办活动使我们能够吸引了解船坞的当地人，他们可能不太愿意来朴茨茅斯大学校园参加类似的活动。然而，如果我们不能证明有能力支付天黑后继续开放这个网站的部分费用，那么博士学习部门的预算缩短就会使这一活动的持续面临风险。为了解决这一困境，我们在这个小奖项中要求的资金中有一半将用于支付在这座历史遗迹正常关闭后继续开放的人力成本。我们申请的另一半资金将使我们能够评估这次活动对出席者的影响，既针对即将到来的2017年活动，也回顾自2013年以来的活动。我们相信，这个一年一度的活动对当地家庭和公众有重大影响，他们参加STFC资助的研究就在朴茨茅斯举行，以提高他们对世界级的认识。为了降低评估成本，并使朴茨茅斯大学本科生了解科学交流的影响成为次要目标，我们计划将这项评估作为一个受资助的夏季本科生研究项目的一部分。我们将确定一名本科生来承担这一任务，他是2017年1月31日活动的志愿者之一。今年夏天，在我们的指导下，这位本科生将利用评估指标和数据收集来尝试衡量我们的观众因我们的活动而做、感觉、重视和理解的事情。这不仅将改善未来的活动，还将提供一个案例研究(我们的目标是写出来发表)，关于在全国各地举行的类似的本地星座主题活动的影响。

The overall aim of this project is to engage Portsmouth area families and members of the general public with the astrophysics, cosmology and gravitation research undertaken at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth through a large scale evening event held at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. This STFC Small Award will allow us to maintain and grow a successful public engagement partnership in Portsmouth. We have run this event at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (PHD) annually since 2013. Holding the event at this iconic location allows us to attract local people who know the Dockyard and might be less willing to come on to the campus of the University of Portsmouth for a similar event. However shortening budgets for the Learning Departments of PHD put the continuation of this event at risk if we cannot demonstrate an ability to cover some of the costs of keeping this site open after dark. To solve this dilemma, half of the funding we ask for in this Small Award will cover the staffing costs of keeping this historic site open after it normally closes. The other half of the funding we request will allow us to evaluate the impact that this event has on the people who attend, both for the upcoming event in 2017, but also looking back to events since 2013. We believe this annual event has a significant impact on the local families and members of the public who attend, in raising their awareness of world class, STFC funded research taking place right here in Portsmouth. In order to keep the costs of evaluation down, as well as enable a secondary aim of educating a Portsmouth undergraduate about evaluating the impact of science communication, we plan to do this evaluation as part of a funded summer undergraduate research project. We will identify an undergraduate to take this on who is one of the volunteers at the 31st Jan 2017 event. In the summer, under our supervision this undergraduate will make use of evaluation metrics and data collection to attempt to measure what our audience does, feels, values and understands as a result of our events. This will not only improve future events, but also provide a case study (which we aim to write up for publication) about the impact of similar local Stargazing themed events held all over he country.